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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
The Scottish capitalist Samuel Laing, who found great comfort in the belief that in Britain “there is no feeling for the fine arts, no foundation for them, no esteem for them” (Porter, p. 265), raises some important questions with regard the relationship between capitalism and the arts, particularly for Victorian Britain between 1840 and 1880, and, as well, in a more general sense for society today. Is free market capitalism antithetical to culture? Was Britain, in her golden age of capitalism a cultural desert? Was Victorian culture essentially a culture of “rank escapism?” (Porter, p. 254) Did the industrial capitalists regard art and learning as harmful, time wasting, and detrimental to civic virtue? Bernard Porter, in reflecting on Laing's work, suggests yes to all of these questions, and further suggests that Laing just may be the guide to lead us to some important revelations about the historic relationship between capitalism and the arts.
1 Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations, pp. 740, 748Google Scholar.
2 For elaboration on this theme see my article, “The Victorians, the Historians, and the Idea of Modernism,” in The American Historical Review 93, 2 (April 1988): 287–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Ibid., p. 302.
4 For a useful discussion of this see Cheap, Hugh, “Vienna 1900 and the Scottish Connection,” The Antique Collector 54, 8 (August 1983): 38–43Google Scholar; It is unfortunate that Glasgow has been evaluated by historians in terms of its slums and its “decline,” although it is interesting to note that more recently Glasgow is the only city to receive a separate chapter in volume 7, “The Later Victorian Age,” in The Cambridge Guide to the Arts in Britain, “The City of Glasgow,” by Gomme, Andor, (Cambridge 1989)Google Scholar. Still the best survey of the mix between culture and capitalist-civic ideology is Briggs, Asa, Victorian Cities (New York, 1965)Google Scholar.
5 Carlisle Journal, 4 October 1889, p. 6Google ScholarPubMed.
6 Crawford, Robert, The People's Palace of the Arts for Glasgow (Glasgow, 1891), p. 4Google Scholar.
7 The revolution in mass consumption in the nineteenth century did something quite remarkable in that it created an insatiable demand for art products and art as leisure, and hence “Art manufacture” in Britain created whole new industries and new art-labor jobs (see my article, “Reconsidering the Factory, Art-labor, and the Schools of Design in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Design Issues 6 (Spring 1990): 58–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Saisselin, Remy G., The Bourgeois and the Bibelot (Rutgers, N.J., 1984), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar.